Posted on 11/05/19
BEER-SHEVA, Israel…November 5, 2019 – David Ben-Gurion’s historical handwritten and printed materials will soon be easily searchable and more accessible for researchers as part of an artificial intelligence collaboration between Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Microsoft.
“We want to share the knowledge and develop new tools,” says Dr. Adi Portughies, head of infrastructure information systems at the Ben-Gurion Archives, located in the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism on BGU’s Sde Boker campus. “The main vision is to create an ecosystem for Israel studies in which researchers, scholars, archivists, and database administrators can share their databases.”
Before this initiative, researchers could only physically thumb through the documents one by one. Comprehensive searching was impossible given the quantity of material, even the material that had been digitally scanned. The new and advanced AI-based system will eventually be able to search the entire archive. It will construct causal vectors, trace issues and ideas through multiple documents, and illuminate relationships through an interactive map. Dr. Tomer Simon, national technology officer at Microsoft Israel, is overseeing the digital transformation process.
According to Doug Seserman, chief executive officer of American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “This is a remarkable and innovative project that will benefit researchers and scholars worldwide. While it is a thrill to see the actual diaries in a visit to the Ben-Gurion Archives, this project will bring to life the works of Israel’s founding prime minister in a more accessible way.”
This is the second archive where Microsoft has begun testing this framework. The first was the multitude of documents related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination investigation which were declassified in 2017.
A second tool being developed will integrate Ben-Gurion's diaries into Microsoft Outlook. Users will be able to see his entries for that particular day and get a sense over time of how Israel's most legendary leader made decisions.